A Stitch in Haste

Awkward:

When trustees of Palm Beach Community College reached a tie vote in August on a proposal to offer health insurance for the domestic partners of employees, the measure failed and advocates for gay professors and other employees were disappointed. Because the college only pays for employees' benefits, the proposal wouldn't have cost the college a penny, but would have opened up quality insurance at a lower cost for the partners of gay and lesbian employees.

Now -- in a move that is seen as adding salt to those wounds -- the college has added a new health insurance benefit for some (unmarried) household members of employees: pet health insurance.
...
College administrators have endorsed the idea of extending benefits to the partners of employees, but have yet to persuade enough board members.

Of course, the two benefits are completely apples-and-oranges, but it is interesting to note that the defeated domestic partner insurance plan would not have cost the college any money -- which means that the trustees who voted against offering the benefit had no rational basis for doing so. Their only possible rationale had to be their own anti-gay bigotry.

And the timing was, as a local gay rights group noted, just plain obnoxious:

"A PBCC announcement that employees could insure their pets being made a mere 90 days after the PBCC announcement that employees could not insure their domestic partners is an affront to PBCC employees with domestic partners."

Hard to quibble with that.

Elsewhere, major public universities have insisted that overly expansive bigot amendments (i.e., those than not only "defend traditional marriage" but also forbid all public recognition of same-sex unions) are hurting their ability to recruit and retain faculty. In their rabid quest to persecute gays, they punish innocent students specifically and their own community generally. Quite the lesson plan there.

(Via Matt.)